Parcours has rolled out its latest tubeless-ready wheelset dubbed the Strade GT, featuring the British brand’s VibraCORE technology, resulting in a claimed 23% reduction in vibration.
How?
Parcours claims its VibraCORE reduces vibrational energy by 19% to 23%, the equivalent of lowering tire pressure by 10–15psi, without any loss of rolling efficiency or handling.
“Aerodynamic gains and weight savings are increasingly marginal. VibraCORE takes a different route. It reduces the vibration that reaches the rider, so you carry less fatigue and can run the tire pressure that’s fast, not just comfortable. Vibration travels from the road surface through the tire, into the rim, and up through the frame to your contact points. Most approaches to managing it (tire pressure, frame compliance, bar tape) act downstream, after the energy has already entered the system. VibraCORE addresses it at the wheel, before it propagates further. Human response to vibration is not uniform. Two frequency ranges matter most: 4 – 12 HZ (seated body resonance), where vibrations here are efficiently transmitted and can be amplified through the core and upper body and 20 – 50 HZ (soft tissue response), when the body responds actively, increasing muscular activity to stabilize against the input. VibraCORE integrates Lineat’s AFFT (Aligned Formable Fiber Technology) carbon material into the spoke bed of the rim as part of the structural layup. It makes up approximately 12–15% of the rim’s total material by volume,” explains Parcours’ Dov Tate.
Additionally, Parcours developed a new hub to accommodate its first-ever carbon spokes, utilizing Alpina Carbolite arrow-bladed cross-section spokes to bolster compliance, while also eliminating weight, along with “captive” spokes that are designed to keep things in place in the event of loss of tension or breakage. Also, the Strade GT’s staggered 49mm (front) and 54mm (rear) hookless rims have a 23.5mm internal width that’s optimized for 30mm tires and up.
Additionally, the new Strade GT gives a nod to sustainability, relying on recycled materials for a major portion of its construction.
“While sustainability is not the primary driver of this project, the use of VibraCORE allows recovered carbon to be used in a structurally meaningful, performance‑critical application. We’re only using 12-15% recycled material by volume per rim, but that’s 12-15% more than we were yesterday. It’s the first step in that direction, and the guys at Lineat are working incredibly hard to improve the material properties of their output, and that might open the door to more in the future. The last thing on the sustainability angle is that we’re also working with a business in Bristol called Uplift360, and we’re looking at whether we can provide the input material for the Lineat process, reclaimed from existing wheels and making it a fully circular process. The end goal that we’re working to – in the coming months, not years – is to be able to recycle old Parcours rims and use that as input material for the VibraCORE in the new rims, which I think would be pretty cool,” says Tate.
Tipping the scales at an impressive 1,130grams, the Strade GT wheelset with steel bearings sells for £2,499, while ceramic bearings fetch an additional £220.
Parcours
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